To prevent the boxes from being opened, by removal of their lid after this sterilization, and as long as the equipments contained in boxes are not needed, there are seals that indicate whether or not they have been opened.
For this purpose, seals like those described inter alia in the patents' applications and U.S. Pat. No. 5,522,627, EP 0 786 753 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,319,779 normally comprise a shaft, capable of being slid into an eyelet closure device such as that of the sterilization box in this present invention, and an arm pivoting on a support part of the shaft proximal end, the distal end of which is irreversibly capable of cooperating and attaching to the shaft distal end so as to form, with said shaft and their common support mount, a closed loop preventing the closure device from opening.
Said seals are mainly constituted of plastic pieces, and the nesting of their arm and shaft ends does not allow the reopening of the closed loop so formed, unless a portion of this piece is manually broken.
Generally, two seals, one of which is described below, are used per sterilization box for securing the two closure systems located on the two opposite sides of the lid and the box.
On the other hand, each sterilization box is labeled before or after sterilization so as to ensure its identification as well as the nature of the equipments it contains, in storages and/or places of use.
For this purpose, a label, of a rather considerable surface area, is placed on the box wall, close to the closure system so as to make it easy to read when boxes are stacked, and is either self-adhesive or slid into a label-holder.
The main disadvantage of this identification method is that the label either has to be removed from the sterilization box after use and this operation is not only unpractical but also leaves behind sticky adhesive residue, and even label residue on the box wall, or may fall out of the label-holder and be easily removed, creating thus a risk of error.
The problem here is how to avoid this disadvantage, while keeping, during the stacking of such sterilization boxes on top of each other, the readability of the identification labels of each box, as well as the recovery of the label during or after the opening of the box.
A solution to this problem is a seal device comprising a shaft slidable into a sterilization box closure device and a support part of the shaft proximal end, said support part comprising a locking element capable of irreversibly cooperating and attaching to the shaft distal end to form therewith a closed loop preventing the opening of the closure device, and according to the invention the shaft support part comprises an additional part to the support one which is only necessary to the seal function, said additional part comprises an area, the facial dimensions of which are preferably greater than those of the only support part, and sufficient for receiving a readable identification label.